


Of Magic and Madness

by EverThePhantom



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Ninjas, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Angst and Humor, Blood Magic, Bromance, Brotherly Affection, Brotherly Love, Dark, Dark Fantasy, Epic Bromance, Family Secrets, Fantasy, Gen, Immortality, Magic, Magic-Users, Male Friendship, Ninja, No Slash, No Smut, Not Beta Read, POV Alternating, POV Male Character, POV Multiple, Souled Vampire(s), Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-16 02:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3471365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverThePhantom/pseuds/EverThePhantom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Discontinued) Kaito, ex-vampire-hunter, swore to find the Pandora Gem and destroy it. Shinichi, perhaps the last of a dying race, feels like he's done everything except really live. Can they overcome their hatred for what the other represents in order to survive, or will it bring them down together? And why do Hakuba and Hattori seem to know more than they're letting on? Bromances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Well, here we start anew._

A dark-haired teenager with a prominent cowlick on the back of his head hooked two fingers in the sliding door and pulled discreetly. Before he was even properly inside the room, his senses were flooded with a crowd of smells and sounds: a few dozen heartbeats (which he was able to ignore after years of practice), girls' perfume and lotion, young men's body odor partially masked by cologne, chalk, and various other meaningless finds, but the one important and alarming scent in the whole classroom hit Shinichi first and set both his feeding and fleeing instincts off at once.

Magic. And from three people, going by the separate human scents attached to it.

How long had it been since Shinichi had known of any human with a significant amount of raw power in his or her veins? Too long for him to try to guess.

And the chances of two of them being in the same class? Almost zero.

It was impossible for Shinichi to narrow down the list of possible sources of magic amid the twenty-six students of Ekoda High, class 2B gazing at him curiously from their seats, but a few stood out from the rest. One, whom Shinichi recognized as Hattori Heiji, the famous Detective of the East, one of the most famous Asian detectives subtly examined him with a calculating look from the back of the room. Did that mean the famous young detective could use magic?

The second, a beautiful young woman sitting on the other side of the room and one row up, stared bug-eyed but quickly masked her emotions when she saw Shinichi had noticed. The reddish tint to her eye colour gave her away as a witch, but they tended to keep to themselves, so she probably wouldn't be a threat. The third student was the famous British detective Hakuba Saguru, the Detective of the West, a famous European detective. He had noticed the reactions of the other two and eyed  _them_  perplexedly.

Shinichi guessed that most of the power in the room that was not his own came from the girl.

The new student had been in the classroom for about three seconds and his cover was already blown.

_What a lovely start this is._

The question was whether they would do anything about it.

But there was another interesting student. What caught his eye was the fact that he looked almost just like Shinichi, minus the traits hidden to the rest of the world by a charm that Shinichi wore around his neck and under his clothes at all times. And the hair was wildly sticking up everywhere, in contrast to Shinichi's mostly flat hair. Also his eyes had a purplish tint to them, a sign of magic just like the witch had though he didn't seem to have noticed anything different about Shinichi.

Shinichi's attention was pulled back to the teacher, a healthy-looking woman not over forty with a kind voice and light brown wavy hair that reached just past her shoulders. She was still going through the standard welcome and introduction for the new student and would soon cue him to write his name on the board.

After he spelled out his name, he faced his new class again, executing the customary bow and greeting. "Hello. I hope we can be friends."

Truthfully, he wasn't very interested in making friends, except for Hattori and Hakuba. When Shinichi was planning on returning to Japan, he heard that both famous detectives were in this class, and his sense of nostalgia couldn't let him pass this up. It's not like he would get too close to them; he really just wanted to stay incognito. Of course, that would be more difficult now with others that sensed magic, but it would look way too suspicious were he to transfer to a different class after only his first day.

At least his assigned seat wasn't near them.

* * *

"Kudou-san, why did you transfer?"

"I used to live in America with my parents, but I missed Japan too much."

"Woah, you live by yourself! I wish I could escape from my parents like that!"

"Kudou-san, do you play any sports?"

It was lunchtime, and thus the students' first opportunity to swarm their new classmate's desk. Said classmate was doing his best to answer each as politely and quickly as possible to remove himself from the limelight. Those students currently not within a metre of him consisted of the detectives and his potential human twin, but not many others.

"Kudou-san, are you related to Kaito-kun? You look so much like him. Except the hair, of course."

He glanced toward his lookalike to find him chatting with the detectives, which was what Shinichi wished  _he_  was doing. "Ah, no, I'm not."

"EVERYONE SHUT UP!"

The sudden increase in volume made Shinichi wince.

The scream had come from a short girl with medium-length brown hair.

"Give him some space already! You'll get to see him every day for the foreseeable future anyway." Her voice gradually grew quieter as she continued, coming to stand by Shinichi.

"I'm so sorry about that," she smiled sweetly at him, all traces of her previous anger gone, "They were like this when Kaito started here, too. My name's Nakamouri Aoko."

A little dumbfounded by her sudden change in demeanour, Shinichi stood up quicly and bowed in response. "Nice to meet you. Are you by any chance related to Nakamouri Ginzo-keibu?"

* * *

Class resumed before Shinichi had a chance to approach the detectives, to his dismay, but he managed to catch them as they were leaving. But as he approached them, he faintly smelled magic.

So one of them did have magic? Probably, Hattori, who had eyed him suspiciously earlier.

"Aren't you two Hattori Heiji and Hakuba Saguru?" he asked.

They shared a look of uneasiness. "Uh, yeah, we are," Hattori replied, "If you're a fan-"

"No, it's nothing like that," Shinichi interjected calmly, "I just recognized you is all. And I heard you both like Sherlock Holmes."

They seemed to relax at that. Hakuba even smiled politely. "Well, Hattori-kun is more of an Ellery Queen fan-"

"But Hakuba here's obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"

At that moment, Shinichi's almost doppelganger appeared with an arm around Hakuba's neck.

At that moment, Shinichi was hit with a powerful wave of the smell of magic.

So the brunt of it was coming from this guy, not the witch? But his initial reaction to Shinichi this morning had been, like most of the class, innocently curious.

But as he neared them now, Shinichi could see an odd quality to his face. The light around it looked just slightly distorted. A tell-tale sign of illusion magic, like what Shinichi was using to hide his nonhuman features and the worst of his battle scars.

But this guy mostly smelled human. What was he hiding?

"The name's Kuroba Kaito, magician."

Shinichi mentally stiffened.  _Why is he so open about being a magician? And to detectives, at that?_

"Yes, Kuroba here is quite the performer," Hakuba supplied, "Now please remove yourself from my personal space."

Kuroba grinned cheekily but obeyed.

_Oh, a stage magician. Of course._

"Speaking of which," the blonde mused, "it was rather odd that he didn't pull any pranks today."

"Well, I wanted to give the new student the gift of relative normalcy on his first day," Kuroba smiled lazily, "but don't expect any such reprieve tomorrow, Hakuba."

Only Hakuba's eye twitched in response. "In that case," he drawled, "I'll have to get back at you for it at the heist this weekend."

Kuroba rolled his eyes.

Shinichi knew about the mysterious magician-thief known as Kaitou Kid, mostly from his research of Hakuba and Hattori, but he didn't know Kuroba was involved. "Am I missing something here?"

"This guy keeps saying things like that because, for some reason, he thinks  _I'm_ the Kaitou Kid. It's ridiculous!" Kuroba huffed.

Actually, that would be plausible. The Kid was indisputably talented, and Kuroba had a lot of magic in him.  _But_   _that's_   _not actual proof._

The conversation continued out the door and through the streets of town, followed by Kuroba. It quickly devolved into an argument between Hakuba and Hattori over which of their favourite fictional detectives was better.

Then they heard a high-pitched scream.

"Seriously?" Hakuba groaned as the four dashed toward the source of the sound, a townhouse building only a few metres away. They arrived a few seconds later to a woman, still screaming in the doorway, and a man on the floor. Hakuba quickly confirmed that he was dead. Fortunately for Shinichi, there was no open wounds on the corpse for blood to seep out and bother his nose.

_Oh, the nostalgia._

Shinichi hadn't been at a fresh crime scene in so long, and a part of him ached to investigate right away. But he knew that he needed to stay out of the spotlight, so he stood near the back, taking a mental tally of the other two detectives' deductive skills. At least, he would have if Hattori hadn't kept giving him and Kuroba weird looks. He hadn't the faintest idea why he was doing that until it was brought up after the case was closed.

"Hey," Hattori looked at both of them, "have you guys happened to see this kind of stuff much before?" They both answered negatively.

"Then how come you both seemed so… _comfortable_? I mean, there was a dead person right there and neither of you seemed phased…" he trailed off.

Crap. Shinichi hadn't thought of that.

"…I used to work at a hospital." Shinichi said lamely.

"Woah, really? Me too!" Kuroba looked up at him.

"Yeah…"

This guy Kuroba was definitely hiding something, Shinichi decided. Working at a hospital was not exactly a common high school job. It looked more like he was piggybacking on Shinichi's on-the-spot excuse.

After an awkward second of staring, Hakuba coughed. "I see." Hattori was frowning, but said nothing.

Not long afterwards, the group said their goodbyes and went separate ways toward home.

* * *

It was the dead of night, the sun having disappeared beneath the horizon several hours ago. Now was the best time to feed. This had been Shinichi's routine for centuries: wait until all honest and good folk were asleep, then strike.

Tonight's chosen victim was a middle-aged man who smelled of narcotics but clearly did not look intoxicated at the moment. (Shinichi had learned a long time ago to avoid the intoxicated.) It was easy to influence his mind to cause him to walk down a secluded back alley, where Shinichi quickly grabbed the man's head and flung it into the brick wall, rendering the man unconscious.

But just as his mind switched into feeding mode as much as he would allow, Shinichi felt himself being seized from behind in much the same way as he had just done. Then a sharp metal object, probably a knife, was pressed against his throat. It hurt more than a knife should hurt one of his kind.

He was tempted to be afraid. He hadn't been overpowered like this by a human before.

"Why are you here,  _vampire_?" a voice barked, "Tell me what they're planning!"

The acidic voice sounded…young. Very young.

But what was most alarming was the sudden wave of  _magic_  that hit his nose.

The scent that came with it was familiar…

_Kuroba? What…?_

When Shinichi didn't respond immediately, Kuroba slammed his forehead against the wall more powerfully than a human should be capable of. "Tell ME!" he seethed.

This was bad. In his current mental state, with his body ready to feed, Shinichi needed to get away from Kuroba for clean air as soon as possible before something bad happened. Blood with magic was infinitely more appetizing than without. After each breath he could feel his willpower slipping away.

"I...I'm not here for you," he sputtered, struggling to keep a mental grip, "Please, I don't want to hurt-," Shinichi's head was banged on the wall again and he cried out in pain. This time he felt blood trickle down his forehead.

At nearly the same time, Shinichi felt his illusion magic fading, revealing his fangs, wings and pointed ears. How was that possible? Had Kuroba somehow disabled the magic in his necklace charm?

Having himself exposed like this made him feel vulnerable, which in turn made him a little more desperate.

Shinichi tried to use one of his black feathered wings to push Kuroba off him, but Kuroba only slashed at it with another knife. Shinichi screeched as he felt it hit bone. His attacker forcefully turned him around and his head collided with the wall again. His loss of blood made his willpower drain even faster and he knew that he wouldn't last much longer.

"Like I'm stupid enough to believe that! Now TELL! ME!" Kuroba practically screamed at the end.

The face in front of him was that of Kuroba Kaito, except now there was a lot more to see. His neck was covered in vampire bite marks. His face had several scars, the most prominent being a large slash that travelled from the outer edge of his right eyebrow, across his eye and onto the bridge of his nose. The eyes themselves looked like they were almost glowing with a violent mixture of hatred, anger and fear.

"Please believe me," Shinichi choked fearfully. It was getting hard to breathe. "I don't know what you mean by any of this. Now please let me go, before I hurt someone…"

He hadn't been planning to kill the drug dealer. Shinichi wasn't a killer. Not since a long time ago.

Something changed in Kuroba's eyes then. The boiling emotions seemed to…boil just a bit less. He stared at Shinichi for a long moment. By now the vampire was trembling and holding his breath against the cloying and tantalizing smell of magic around him, but his body demanded blood.

Kuroba withdrew his weapon, which wasn't a knife, but a ninja star, he could see, glowing blue with magic. Shinichi fell to the ground. As he brought his face off the pavement, his vision tunnelled and everything started to look red and hazy.

It was too late now.

* * *

The vampire stood up slowly. Even in the dim light, Kaito could see his blood-red irises. The creature growled hungrily, baring fang. Obviously, he had given into his feeding instincts and gone into frenzy mode.

_Great. Just great._

The magician's battle-hungry side surged to life at the prospect of a fight, but the rest of him knew that this was entirely his fault.

Surprising as it was, this vampire didn't want to kill.

When Kaito had stared into Kudou's still-sane eyes a moment ago, he could sense by his face and his aura that he was telling the truth. This vampire had nothing to do with his enemies. For once, Kaito didn't have to kill a vampire to protect humanity.

_Let's get this over with quickly._

But don't take it the wrong way, parts of him  _really_ wanted to kill. The part that had always loved danger and battle and power and victory, and the part that still hated all vampires for the hell they'd given him.

At that moment, the vampire sprang toward him head on. Kaito wasn't surprised. In his experience, thirst-crazed vampires weren't very capable of strategy. Feeding time was when they were by far the most vulnerable. He readied a thin blade.

Just as the vampire was about to hit him, he felt a collision – not front-on like his eyes told him there would be, but from his left instead, knocking his dagger away. As the two fell to the ground, the Kudou who had been charging straight for him had disappeared.

_An illusion. He still has enough coherent thought in his brain to conjure illusions? This guy may actually be a challenge._

They hit the ground with Kudou on top. The first thing Kaito did was grab the other's hair and wrench the vampire's threatening fangs away from his body.

They struggled like so for a few minutes, even matched until the vampire made a mistake in his hunger-induced rage and gave Kaito time for a few extra kicks. This sent his opponent off him, giving the magician time to pull out his boomerang and throw it, hitting Kudou square in the head again and knocking him to the ground, unconscious.

Kaito picked himself up, dusted himself off, gave his adversary a remorseful glance-over to make sure he wouldn't die, and flew home on his hang glider.

Truth be told, he had enjoyed this in the end, for some reason.

Tomorrow at school was going to be awkward, though…


	2. Chapter 2

Shinichi came to, lying on his side. His brain took his status.

His body hurt all over and screamed for blood. Going by how his wings felt to him, he knew they were intangible again. And he felt something moving in his pockets.

He opened his eyes to find the drug dealer that he'd led here to feed on before Kuroba showed up. They were still in the alley.

Shinichi's reaction to the attempted robbery was somewhere between insulted, disgruntled and amused. When man noticed he was awake, he grabbed Shinichi by the hair and sent his head into the concrete in an attempt to knock him out again.

It wouldn't have hurt much were it not for his other head injuries. All it did was make Shinichi fully awake. He deadpanned at the man and his pathetic excuse of an attack compared to Kuroba's. "Get off me."

He punched the man in the stomach lightly (for him), but it was enough to cause the man to fall over next to him, clutching his solar plexus and grimacing.

Shinichi stood up and fulfilled his original intentions of the night. He knocked the man unconscious again, then turned his victim's head to side to bare the neck. Then he sunk his fangs in just above the collarbone and the more animalistic part of his brain sang.

The tension and pounding in his head quickly subsided as his thirst was sated. The pain he felt from his injuries gradually decreased as he took more blood, thought it never faded entirely. His body wasn't healed, but it would be by morning. Even his wing would be whole again, though there would be scarring. But what was one more scar?

As expected, the blood itself tasted bitter, reflecting the man’s immoral nature.

Despite needing more blood than usual, Shinichi managed to stop himself before taking enough to permanently injure his victim. He licked the wound clean. Vampire saliva on a human's wound healed it as fast as if the wound belonged a vampire.

Deciding to wait for tomorrow to contemplate the other events of the night, he then proceeded to rob his victim of his cash, the only object worth stealing that couldn't be traced back to him.

He always did this; he had to pay living expenses somehow and didn't want to be a burden on the friend whose roof he was currently living under. And besides, his victims were dirty criminals who went straight to prison, anyway.

Then he produced an amount of twine he'd brought with him and tied the man's hands behind his back and around a drain pipe running down the wall. After tying the man's feet, he took out the man's cell phone and dialed the police, leaving a description of their location. Finished, Shinichi returned the phone and walked home, simultaneously enjoying the soothing feel of the light drizzle of rain that had just begun and lamenting the fact that his clothes were possible ruined by his blood. Normally he'd wait until he heard the high-pitched police sirens approach (to ensure his victim did not escape) and then fly away, but there was no way he was flying tonight, or even running, and he wanted a head start if he was walking.

Turning in his victims for their crimes was a habit he'd picked up a while back. He knew that it wouldn't have that much effect on the city's crime rate. For each criminal he apprehended, there were scores more, even in this district alone. Each one was just a drop in a bucket. He knew that no matter how many he caught, it would neither erase nor atone for his past sins towards humanity.

But it was a start at least. A first step.

Kuroba said nothing to Shinichi the next day about their tussle. In fact, he did an astounding job of at acting as if nothing had happened at all. His behavior mirrored that of yesterday, down to the playful banter. This did not surprise Shinichi, considering how the magician had revealed nothing at school yesterday, either.

As promised, the magician played all sorts of tricks and pranks during school. There was hair-dying, confetti, mop chases (which Shinichi found secretly amusing), roses and screaming girls (which Shinichi found painful on his poor, sensitive ears). The vampire himself had been left out of it, which was fine with him. Shinichi didn't have much trouble being in the same room as Kuroba, but if Kuroba was physically close to him too much, say in the desk next to his all day, the aroma of magic would eventually start getting to him.

As much as he tried to listen in classes, he couldn't get his mind off his classmate.

He'd actually lost a fight to a human.

Granted, Shinichi had been at the disadvantage of taking most of the damage before he actually let himself fight back, and when he did his brain was muddled with hunger. And his opponent was stronger than almost any human Shinichi had met before.

But still. He'd lost to a  _human_. It rankled his pride, but he was glad that neither of them had ended up dead.

And he'd seen how much Kuroba wanted to do him in, too. The intense revolting in his eyes and voice.

Obviously Kuroba had killed before. Many times. Thus his lack of discomfort at the crime scene yesterday, even if that person was a human.

He was a vampire hunter of sorts, going by all the now-hidden puncture scars he had last night, but... how was that possible? Shinichi hadn't seen or heard from another vampire in so painfully long. If there were enough of his kind in this country that a hunter was here, that humans still felt the need to hunt vampires… why didn't Shinichi know about them?

And there was more: how in the world did Kuroba know where he was last night? And who was this group of enemies that he had? Vampires?

Kudou Shinichi, ex-detective, had a mystery on his hands. A mystery that he was going to solve, no matter how long it took.

And it would probably take a while. But that was okay. It wasn't like Shinichi had anywhere more important to be.

The bell signaling the end of school for the day finally resounded. Shinichi looked up from packing his book bag to meet the countenance of Nakamouri Aoko. Depending on her mood, Shinichi had learned, she was either very sweet or very dangerous (at least to Kuroba).

"Hello, Kudou-kun," she greeted cheerfully, "How familiar are you with Ekoda?"

"Not very much, I'm afraid."

"Great!" she smiled, "Then we'll show you around. Right, Kaito?"

The magician looked up from where he was packing his bag, giving the quickest of glances toward Shinichi. "But Aoko…" he whined.

"Oh, come on! Aoko  _knows_ you don't have any other plans."

Shinichi had to admit that he found it endearing when she referred to herself in the third person like a small child.

Kuroba whimpered in response but relented. Shinichi figured this was to prevent another mop attack from his friend.

The girl turned to the two detectives, one of which had blue hair, courtesy of Kuroba. "Do you want to come too? Saguru? Heiji-kun?"

"I'd love to, Aoko," Hakuba answered, "but we need to finish the report from a case yesterday-"

"I'll do it, Hakuba," A green-haired Hattori declared, "You go with them."

"But-"

"We don't  _both_  need to do it. Besides, I wanna get this hair dye out. And you don't get out enough, anyway."

"And what are you insinuating by saying that?"

Kuroba rolled his eyes.

"BOYS!" Aoko's yell preemptively ceased their fight.

Shinichi took the moment of pause to speak. "The police don't really care who does the report, right?"

"You're right," Hakuba sighed, "It's not worth arguing about." He looked like he was getting a headache.

"Right then. See you later, Heiji-kun!" Aoko waved as she slung an arm through Kuroba's and Hakuba's each and pulled them along happily before either could protest. Shincihi followed, smiling at their antics. Spending time with young, carefree people like Nakamouri made him feel younger, too.

The three took Shinichi around to see the sights of Ekoda, what few there were: the shops, the police station where Nakamouri-keibu and his Kaitou Kid Taskforce worked, and the Ekoda clock tower where, according to his guides, Kuroba and Nakamouri Aoko had first met. The girl asked Hakuba if it was alright if they passed by his grandfather's laboratory, but dropped it when Hakuba made known his reluctance. It didn't dampen her happiness.

"You three are close, aren't you?" Shinichi asked casually not long afterward. Their arms weren't linked anymore; Nakamouri had let go shortly after leaving school.

"Saguru and I have known each other since we were pretty little," the girl mused, putting her finger to her chin, "And Kaito and I only met a few years ago, but he doesn't care for formalities."

That explained the first-name basis.

Suddenly, Kuroba's stomach growled loudly.

"Let's get food!" their female companion announced, "I'm pretty hungry, too. There's a burger joint not far from here."

Slight problem: Shinichi wasn't overly fond of human food. Sure, he could eat it, and it did sometimes help delay his hunger for blood slightly, but the artificial ingredients humans put into processed foods these days just tasted bad. Any meat he ate these days would have to be fresh. He liked fruits, vegetables and rice well enough, so packing lunches for school wasn't an issue.

But he felt that he should get something to eat with them now to keep up appearances.

Pondering the dilemma must have shown on his face, because suddenly Nakamouri asked, "What's wrong, Kudou-kun? Don't like hamburgers?"

"No, not really," he answered, grateful for an out, "But we can still go there. I'm not that hungry, anyway."

"Well they have other things there, too," she replied helpfully, "like chicken and fish sandwiches. And ice cream."

"I'll just get some ice cream, then. Thank you." Ice cream was far more preferable than processed meat, even if it was too sweet.

"You're welcome. So you have a sweet-tooth like Kaito?"

It was then that Shinichi noticed that someone's heartrate had spiked. He looked at his guides and noticed that Kuroba was working to control his breathing, even if his face still carried his usual carefree smile.

"Are you alright?" he asked, genuinely concerned.

"Oh don't worry about him," Nakamouri waved toward Kuroba, "He freezes like that whenever someone mentions-" Kuroba's hand over her mouth prevented her from continuing.

"If you know that, then don't say it  _again_!" Kuroba spat.

She tore his hand away. "Don't cover my mouth like that!"

"You were going to say  _that word_  again!"

As the bickering continued, Hakuba switched places so that he was walking next to Shinichi.

"He has ichthyophobia, the fear of fish," he said quietly.

Shinichi blinked.

This guy, who had fought vampires and won, and wasn't fazed by corpses…was afraid of the average  _fish_?

_Well, each to his own. It's not like people can easily control what they're afraid of._

It didn't take them much longer to reach the restaurant. Shinichi quickly ordered a vanilla ice cream (his taste in human food was rather simple) and made it back out and away from the strong smells inside. He chose to lean on the glass wall-window of the restaurant while he waited for the others.

In the past, he had much more trouble spending time with humans like this because of his wings. He used to invoke simple illusion magic to render his wings, fangs and the points of his ears invisible, but that wouldn't keep humans from being able to touch them. He had needed to be constantly on the lookout to keep people in front of him so they didn't get close enough.

Then he found an amulet on a vampire he had killed out of self-defense. His reason in keeping it had been to pawn it off for some money (doing things like that was much easier back then). He'd put it around his neck while flying so he wouldn't drop it. And then he'd started falling through the sky. He flapped his wings and felt no air resistance. In a panic, he'd removed it and suddenly his wings worked again. Not only did the pendant make them invisible, but immaterial as well. Same for his fangs and ear-tips. And since his wings now weighed nothing, wearing the amulet forced him to adjust his sense of balance. Right now, his back leaned against the large wall-window, and his wings phased right through it, into the restaurant on the other side. It was an odd sensation, to be sure, but well worth the peace of mind.

He was brought back to the present when Kuroba joined him against the wall, not too close, holding a wrapped up sandwich in one hand and an ice cream with a hard chocolate shell in the other. He began on the ice cream, ignoring the sandwich. Taking a bite of the chocolate shell revealed that the sweet, cold stuff inside was chocolate flavored with chocolate chips. Shinichi found it rather droll. "So you like chocolate?"

"Yeah," Kuroba answered with a hint of hesitance, head tilted toward the ground, bangs covering his eyes.

Shinichi licked his ice cream thoughtfully. He'd been so caught up in the normalcy of the group interaction that afternoon that he'd temporarily forgotten how he and the magician had left things the last time they were alone, and now that they were again, Kuroba's now-stoic body language set a tense atmosphere, despite the sounds of joviality from people around them.

If there was anything he wanted to say to the magician about their encounter last night, now was the time.

"…Thank you."

With his senses currently trained on Kuroba, he easily heard the magician's heartrate pick up just so. There was no other indication that he'd even heard Shinichi's comment until after finishing a bite of his dessert. "For what?" he asked, wary and a little gruff, a one-eighty from his behavior in front of the others not ten minutes ago.

"For…" he trailed off. He wanted to say 'for not killing me', but there were passersby within hearing range and he was feeling characteristically paranoid.

He sidled closer to Kuroba, keeping his face tilted away slightly for fresh air. Being upwind helped. "I know that our races don't normally get along, but I've been trying to be an exception," he whispered, "I'm no threat to you or any other humans…"

_Idiot. He should already know that from last night._

"…And I don't know of any others around that are."

Shinichi was nervous now. His instincts told him to use his power to calm Kuroba's mood, but he didn't dare for fear that this powerful magician would feel it and think Shinichi was manipulating him for unfriendly reasons. And if Shinichi was going to get the answers he wanted, he would have to get Kuroba to trust him a little. He chose to open up a little.

"I'm a loner," he continued, "The only reason I'm living here now is because of Hakuba-san and Hattori-san. They're good detectives, and I used to be a detective too, so I couldn't resist trying to get to know them."

He took a preparatory breath. "And there's something I'd like to ask you."

His classmate blinked at the sudden change in topic, still avoiding Shinichi's gaze. "And what would that be?"

Part of Shinichi was afraid of what he might find out, but he couldn't take back his words.

"I noticed that you've… _encountered_  many of my kind before," he said carefully, "Did many…survive?"

"…A few." Kuroba's voice took on a strange, lilting tone. It was rather creepy, coming from the high school student. He had finished his ice cream and was now taking bites from what was left of the cone.

 _Only a few?_ Shinichi closed his eyes tightly in grief. He tried to ignore Kuroba's tone, "Were any of these encounters within the past year?"

"…Perhaps." Crunch.

"Would you cross me if I decided to look for them?"

"Depends." Crunch.

"On what?"

"Why do you want to find them?" For the first time since stepping outside the restaurant, Kuroba looked at him, head turning slowly.

The look in his eyes was suited better on the face of a vampire rather than that of a human.

It was downright predatory. It screamed 'danger' to even Shinichi. He'd only ever known of one or two other humans, long dead now, who felt as dangerous as this one. The vampire felt like he was being  _toyed with_ , like a mouse trapped between the claws of a hungry cat that was waiting for the whim to eat him. Was this how Shinichi's victims had felt back when he was a ruthless killer?

Then he turned angry at the situation. He felt like he was losing a battle of words.

He had just wanted answers. Why had the magician turned so pernicious on him?

He stood up fully from the window and turned to face the human head-on, determined.

"Now you listen to  _me_ ," he growled quietly, baring an invisible fang, "I spent the last few  _centuries_  thinking I might be the last of my kind. If I hear there are others still alive in this god-forsaken world, then I'm going to  _find_ them!"

The predatory face was satisfactorily wiped from Kuroba's face, replaced with surprise. It was a little disorienting how fast the magician's expression changed. "So…" he began cautiously, "you really do just want to reconnect?"

" _Yes,_  idiot." Shinichi didn't care how safe or unsafe it may be to call this particular person 'idiot'.

“Hm,” Kuroba mused thoughtfully, “I’m curious: what did you with that man last night when you left?”

“I tied him up, called the police, and left him. _Alive_.”

At that moment, whatever had put Shinichi so on edge originally was gone, like it was just sucked out of his head in a single moment. He was still pissed, but not in the same way. He didn't feel like he was in a life-or-death situation anymore. The way he'd so disrespectfully addressed Kuroba somehow helped lighten the mood, too.

_Wait a second…_

"Was that… _you_?"

"Was what 'me'?" He asked with a slightly affronted expression.

"Were you messing with my head just now?"

The teen hesitated, then sighed. "Sorry… I… I hadn't even realized I was doing it." He seemed genuinely remorseful. "Old habits die hard."

It was rare for a human to affect the mind of a vampire like that. But it was also rare for a human to be as powerful as Kuroba.

On impulse, Shinichi punched him in the shoulder, harder than he normally would a human, but not hard enough to send his classmate flying and cause a scene.

"Oww, what was that for?"

"Don't do that to me, okay? I'm not your enemy."

The boy looked to the ground again, still holding his arm. "Yeah…I know that now. But I wasn't sure before, so that's probably why…" he trailed off.

"Last night didn't make it obvious?" Shinichi leaned on the window again. He'd never get used to the feeling of people phasing through his wings on the other side of the glass.

"I thought it was at the time," Kuroba answered, "but I woke this morning with new doubts. I didn't think there werefriendly vampires anymore."

That sobered the mood a bit.

"Look," Kuroba sighed, "you aren't going to want to seek out these vampires unless you care for no one's life but you're own. Why am I after them? Because every one of them is rotten to the core."

That wasn't what Shinichi wanted to hear. "How can you be sure about that?"

"I've had enough exposure to them to know. No one can be in their group and be secretly good. Anything good rots."

The hopeful vampire didn't want to accept this. He didn't want to hear that the first sign in centuries of other vampires would only lead to evil ones. He was so tired of being alone. Most vampires had the same social needs as humans.

When he'd decided to ask Kuroba about this, he'd forgotten how much he had changed since he was in regular contact with his kind. Thinking about returning to  _that_  way of life made him a little sick. He'd been unconsciously looking for a happy reunion with vampires that were friendly to humans, something that no longer existed, and realizing that made him more than a little depressed.

There were other things he wanted to ask, like how Kuroba had found him last night, but he decided this was enough for one day.

As if on cue, the door to the restaurant swung open, revealing Hakuba and Nakamouri.

"Geez, what took you guys so long?" Kuroba huffed, instantly returning to his normal-high-school-student persona.

"Sorry!" Nakamouri held up her food, "Our orders got mixed up with someone else's, and then we saw you guys having what looked like an important conversation and we didn't want to interrupt."

"Yeah, right! You were probably trying to get more alone time with your boyfriend!"

Kuroba was just  _asking_  for it, wasn't he?

"Saguru is NOT my boyfriend, BAKAITO!"

The Brit just stepped back and pinched the bridge of his nose against a headache.

Shinichi joined him. "Out of curiosity, how did you know we were having an 'important conversation'? Did you hear anything we said?"

To the vampire's relief, Hakuba shook his head. "No, though you did look fairly angry at one point. Your punching Kuroba made us laugh. Your face looked much like Aoko's," he chortled.

"Ah…I see."

Shinichi was glad to have the fun distractions around him that were his classmates in stark contrast to the heavy discussion earlier. He was now looking forward to the event this weekend, as well.

He'd decided to go and observe the Kaitou Kid heist in person in a few days. But he wouldn't tell Kuroba, just in case. He intended to find out more about the enigma of a thief.

"Oi, Kudou-kun, what happened to your ice cream? Isn't that it on the ground?"

"Huh?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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	3. Chapter 3

The next day at school, Shinichi was invited by Aoko and Hakuba to sit with their friend group at lunchtime. It consisted of Kuroba, Hattori, and two other girls he hadn't met yet. They introduced themselves as Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko.

They seemed nice enough. Suzuki-san was a chatterbox that controlled a significant portion of the conversation, while Mouri-san acted rather shyly. That is, unless Suzuki-san let drop information that Mouri found embarrassing, at which point she would turn pink and scold her friend. Comments like this tended to be personal achievements or personality traits, like the facts that Mouri was a master in martial arts and cared so much about her separated parents that she was always thinking of ways to try to get them back together. Even Shinichi found it embarrassing to hear that second one because it was about a complete stranger. Thankfully, whenever things went that way, someone else would steer the conversation elsewhere.

Life continued with no excitement until that Friday, the day of the upcoming Kaitou Kid heist. Kuroba and Hakuba bantered about said heist and the Kuroba's supposed other identity, while Suzuki preened in hope of getting a close-up look at her 'beloved Kid-sama'. Once they sat down and opened their lunches, Nakamouri suddenly asked Shinichi a question he'd never been asked before.

"Kudou-san, may I ask you something a little personal?" she asked hesitantly.

Shinichi blinked. "Yeah, I guess."

"Are you…vegetarian?"

Kuroba broke out laughing.

"Kaito! How is that funny?" Nakamouri glared. When he ignored her, she cuffed him on the head.

"Oww, stop that!"

Shinichi looked down at the lunch he'd packed, considering the question as they argued. It was a variation of his usual lunch: rice, fruits and vegetables with their associated sauces. He could definitely see how she'd come to the conclusion that she had, especially with his selection of ice cream at the burger joint the other day.

But he did like certain kinds of meat, when they was fresh.

"No, I'm not," he answered politely, "I just have very…narrow tastes."

That sent Kuroba on a second round, falling backwards as he cracked up, obviously taking Shinichi's words the wrong way.

"What?" the vampire snorted in Kuroba's direction, "Packaging and preserving it like it is nowadays makes it taste different. I like it fresh."

That only seemed to make it worse. This time it was Hakuba's turn to not-so-subtly elbow Kuroba's side. "I think you're the only one who finds it funny, Kuroba."

"I know, I know," Kuroba struggled to talk, "It's just…HAHA!" And that was all he could say.

"You're hopeless, Kuroba-kun, you know that?" Suzuki deadpanned, "You have no tact at all, completely opposite from Kid-sama."

* * *

The heist officially began at 8:00 that evening. Shinichi had arrived a half-hour earlier to scout out the area for a good vantage point. A crowd had already accumulated on the ground both outside and inside the museum housing the target, but the idea of trying to stay afloat in the sea of people did not appeal to him. Fortunately, there were a few other tall buildings nearby that weren't cordoned by the police, so Shinichi picked one and made his way toward the back alley behind it, then made short work of flying past its darkened windows up to the roof. He decided to reequip his amulet just in case the news chopper spotted him, though at the moment its attention was entirely on the hullabaloo taking place on the ground.

When the heist actually started, Shinichi quickly realized that most of the action would take place inside the museum itself this time. But there was nothing he could do about that now, so he bunkered down to wait.

About thirty minutes later, one of the museum's many windows shattered, and a white glider appeared, flying in a direction away from Shinichi's vantage point. The news helicopter followed it.

Then suddenly the thief was also on the rooftop of the museum. Shinichi guessed the one flying away was either a dummy or an accomplice.

Even having seen pictures and news footage regarding the thief, Shinichi found it comical to see a criminal dressed the way his was. His garish white suit, top hat and monocle made him look like he was going to an eccentric costume party. But hey, he got full marks from Shinichi for originality.

The Kaitou Kid removed a small object from a pocket and held it up in the moonlight. It sparkled a deep blue as he examined it for a few seconds, then put it away. Shinichi guessed he was checking it for any telltale signs of a fake.

A minute later, the thief was joined by a huffing and puffing Hakuba, but Kid seemed to not react at all. In fact, they started… _talking_. He could see Hakuba's mouth moving, but couldn't hear what they were saying.

He didn't have time to think about getting closer though, because at that moment he heard a rush of wings. He turned to see someone land on the other end of the rooftop he currently stood on.

_Another vampire?!_

Shinichi was momentarily breathless at the evidence in front of him. Sure, he'd believed Kuroba earlier, but to see another like himself, after all this time… It gave him hope, even though he could tell just by looking that this particular one would never be a friend of his.

This vampire's feathers brown with cream-colored flecks, and the color of his short cropped hair matched the darker brown of his wings. He possessed dark eyes, high cheekbones and a rather small nose. His apparent age was in the thirties and his magic smelled more powerful than Shinichi's. He wore black long pants with a matching shirt, and had carried his black rifle bag in his arms to give his wings room.

"Hey. You must be the other one they told me would be here. The name's Hawk. Nice to meet you. Sorry I'm late."

_I'll just play along for now, I guess._

Shinichi smiled. "That's alright. I'm Leopard."

"'Leopard'?" Hawk asked, "I thought vampires were only allowed to be called animals that flew."

 _This group has humans, too?_ He filed that away for later.

He would have used his mind-influencing power to stay clear of suspicion, but Hawk would probably notice it. "Me too," he answered sheepishly, "I'm not sure why they let me have that name."

Hawk looked him over. "Hmm. You're pretty young to get assigned to a mission like this one."

At first Shinichi was confused by the statement. Then he remembered that Hawk couldn't tell he had wings because of his pendant. He would have been able to tell if they were hidden by simpler illusion magic.

Vampires stopped aging when their wings reached full maturity. Unlike other facets of vampire puberty, they could chose when this process began and how long it would take. Faster meant more painful and more difficulty adjusting physically. Shinichi had taken only a few hours for it at the young age of seventeen in order to save his life. The experience hurt like hell when rushed so.

But to Hawk, Shinichi really was just a teenager. And Shinichi didn't want to tell him about his pendant. "I suppose."

It would most likely be safe to assume that these were the vampires Kuroba had spoken about. What were the chances of another such group existing around here? Their presence meant they were after Kid, too, which made even more sense if Kuroba really was Kid, and if Hakuba insisted on that being truth, there had to be more than a few good reasons. Plus that would explain what made this mission so special; Kuroba was no amateur. Which meant Hawk wouldn't be, either.

The sniper removed his rifle from its case. "So, what's your weapon of choice?"

The key to successful deception was to stay as close to the truth as possible. "Just magic and knives, really. Nothing special."

Back when civilization was less, well,  _civilized_ , fighting and hiding on a regular basis were required to live as a lone vampire, and Shinichi had picked up skills in small blades, though they were somewhat rusty now. Later on, he'd learned how to shoot a few guns, but that was a few hundred years ago and he didn't want to start a conversation about guns with someone who knew modern-day kinds.

Hawk produced a handgun and inspected it, then cocked it. "Really? What kind of magic?"

"Fire." A rather common type of elemental magic back in the day.

"Interesting."

Shinichi turned back to check on Hakuba and the Kaitou Kid on the other rooftop, convinced that Hawk thought the other vampire was on his side. They were still talking. Was the Brit even trying to catch the thief? What could those two possibly be talking about, unless Hakuba knew more than Shinichi thought he did?

_What-_

He didn't have time to think about it because at that moment Shinichi heard a quick, low sound coming from the direction of the other vampire, and then his head was hurting like it was on fire. The force of the gunshot and his unpreparedness sent Shinichi to the ground, landing on his side close to the edge of the roof. At least he hadn't fallen clean off the building.

While a fully mature, winged vampire had much more resilience than any human or non-winged vampire, the head was still a distinct weak point and he would die if he didn't feed soon.

Too weak to move, he felt a foot roll him onto his back and press down on his chest. He felt blood pour down the side of his head. Eyes cracked, he saw Hawk point a smoldering handgun, silencer attached, at Shinichi. "Strange. You're pretty tough for a kid. Ah well, that means I get to question you." He smiled. "You don’t have fangs and your ears look human, but your smell screams ‘vampire’. Who are you and how did you know I would be here?"

Shinichi scrambled for a story to buy time. "I didn't know you'd be here!" he croaked, "I'm on a separate reconnaissance mission regarding the British detective that comes to Kid heists!"

Hawk looked nonplussed. "Liar-"

The exchange was interrupted by what sounded like a small explosion coming from the heist building. Hawk turned to look toward it, to Shinichi's left.

"Shit-" Then a flash of white entered Shinichi's vision from that direction, and just as suddenly both Hawk and Kid were out of Shinichi's limited sight, leaving nothing but the starry night sky in view. He both heard and felt them land somewhere on the roof.

By this time, Shinichi felt his consciousness begin to slip away, but at that moment he got a whiff of Kid's scent. It was unmistakably Kuroba, and though his magic didn't smell as potent as usual, it was enough to delay an unintended nap. He thanked his lucky stars that he'd fed earlier that night as a precaution.

"Hey, Hawk! It's been awhile! Miss me?" Kid's voice was suavely casual.

"Go to hell, you demon!"

The human cackled in response. "Well  _that's_  not very nice!"

After a short tussle that Shinichi could not see, there was a gunshot, again masked by a silencer. Instead of someone crying out in pain, there was a horrible gurgling sound, followed a few times by the distinctive sound of a blade cutting through flesh. Shinichi heard some blunt object clatter to the roof.

Not much later, Kid was leaning over him, face and what little could be seen of his chest speckled in what smelled like vampire blood. Shinichi couldn't smell any fresh blood coming from Kid himself. The scars that he had seen on Kuroba's face that night in the alley were not visible.

He was vaguely wondering how Kid had reached such a velocity as he had upon impact with Hawk when suddenly Kid pressed his wrist, glove removed and sleeve pulled back, beneath Shinichi's nose. "Drink."

Shinichi was astonished at the offer, but too hungry to ponder it, so he let instinct take over. He bit down.

He barely even broke the skin. He'd forgotten to remove his amulet, so his fangs at the moment were simple human canines instead.

Kuroba, not knowing about the amulet, looked at him curiously.

"…Necklace, under my shirt…Take it off." Shinichi rasped.

A pair of gloved hands gingerly unbuttoned the first few buttons of both Shinichi's jacket and shirt. As soon as Shinichi felt the pendant being carefully lifted off him, his extra features grew back into place. He didn't pay his now uncomfortably crumpled wings any mind as Kuroba's wrist appeared in his vision and he didn't waste another moment.

It was like a symphony, if a taste could be compared to sound. It was beautiful and strong, with undertones of tragedy. And the density of magic was such that the vampire wouldn't have had to feed again for several days were he not mortally wounded. He had never had anything like this before. And there was something else about it that tickled his brain. It reminded him of his past for some reason.

Later, he would wonder how in the world he'd been able to hold on and not fully give in to his instinct to drain Kid entirely.

He heard metal  _clink_  as the bullet hit the ground and his head wound finally started to close. At the same time, his source of blood disappeared, eliciting a needy sound before he could stop it. He opened his eyes, not realizing he had closed them, and beheld Kid sitting to Shinichi's left, a little tense, wiping his wrist with a handkerchief. He had already cleaned his face. If he felt any pain, he didn't show it. He was facing the edge of the roof, and a white flickering light played on the back of his white top hat and cape. Now that Shinichi's body wasn't so fixated on saving his life, he noticed the horrible smell of burning flesh, made familiar by old memories. He didn't turn to look for fear of being blinded.

While the vast majority of legends about vampires were fabricated by vampires themselves and thus false, they really did have a weakness to fire that they didn't summon themselves. Their flesh burned more quickly than that of humans.

Shinichi slowly stood up, wincing as his wings moved from their cramped position between his back and the rooftop. Besides tired and with a splitting headache, he felt good, considering what had happened.

Kid briefly flicked his eyes toward him at the sound, then stood up and handed Shinichi his pendant, not looking him in the eye. "We should clean this up and get going, unless we want to explain to Hakuba and Nakamouri-keibu exactly what happened here." His voice betrayed no emotion.

Shinichi took in his surroundings for the first time since Kuroba had arrived. The flames consuming Hawk's body had died, leaving only scattered ashes and a large blotch of black pavement. Kuroba had been chillingly thorough.

Radially outward from the pyre were flecks of blood, in addition to the pool of Shinichi's further away. No doubt it was caked in his hair as well.

Kid knelt down, pocketing the bullet that had been in Shinichi's head for later disposal, then set to work on burning the large puddle away, white flames shooting out of his palms as the congealing blood slowly began to evaporate. Shinichi wasn't good with modern technology, but he knew that burning blood was the best way to make it unusable in a lab if one didn't mind leaving evidence of its presence.

Then Shinichi realized something. "What happened to Hawk's guns?"

"I got rid of them," was Kid's simple answer.

"…Okay."

Shinichi knelt down to help Kuroba burn the blood away, producing a blue flame of his own. White flame took much more energy than he currently had.

"No," Kid stopped him, "Let your body focus on healing. You were shot in the head, remember? Can you fly?"

Shinichi stood uncertainly. "Yeah, I'll be alright. What about you? Are you hurt?"

"Nothing serious. Go home and rest."

Not sure what else to do, Shinichi complied and headed for the edge of the roof. "…Thanks, Kuroba. You really saved my hide."

Kuroba paused at hearing his name. "…Consider it an apology for last time. We can talk on Monday after school on the roof. You owe me an explanation."

Shinichi smiled. "You'll deny it to the ends of the earth for Hakuba but admit it so easily for me?"

"I know my scent is rather unique."

"That it is."

"And I doubt you want me arrested-" He stopped.

At that moment, Shinichi heard the distant sound of rapidly pounding feet, steadily growing louder.

"Someone's coming."

They couldn't afford to be seen here, with the nonviolent thief's suit speckled in blood as they stood near what had been a bloody cremation.

"Go." Kid said brusquely.

"What about the blood?"

"Go!" Kuroba was running towards him and pushed him off the rooftop. Moments later the roof's access door slammed open. Shinichi unfurled his wings as Kid's glider snapped into place and they separated: Shinichi headed to the left and Kid's glider had to go right to fly properly in this wind.

The vampire circled back to the other side of the building, then flew upward to get a view of the new arrival on the roof. It was Hakuba, examining the mostly-dry pool of Shinichi's blood.

* * *

Shinichi wasn't able to begin to process everything that had happened until he no longer needed to spend his energy to stay awake while flying. Shinichi had felt good earlier due to the combination of adrenaline and powerful blood in his system, but now he felt like there was a stack of bricks on his head.

He took the minimum time required to get to bed, only changing his clothes and rinsing the blood out of his hair. Professor Agasa Hiroshi, old friend and the homeowner, was nowhere to be seen, probably asleep already, for which Shinichi was grateful. He didn't feel like explaining the blood all over his head and shirt even though the man would assume the blood was Shinichi's and not some poor human's.

He hit his own bed, ready for sleep as well, but then his mind threw the night's earlier events into the forefront of his mind once again.

He'd gone to a Kaitou Kid heist. He'd met another vampire who was part of a group of humans and vampires working together, who then shot Shinichi, one of his own kind. Then Shinichi had been rescued by a human who was more powerful than a human should be. A human who'd been ironically called a demon by a vampire. And laughed. Then the human had summarily gutted the vampire leaving nothing behind but blood and ashes, and saved Shinichi's life.

Either Kuroba was as comfortable with killing as Shinichi had once been, or he was very good at keeping his emotions in check and doing what needed to be done.

Then Hakuba had arrived before they could get rid of all the blood.

_That's going to come back to bite us, sooner or later._

* * *

"I'm home!" Kaito called out absent-mindedly after shutting the door to his house and toeing his shoes off. After dropping of the roof earlier, he had hidden away until Hakuba had left, then cleaned up the rest of the evidence where possible. He'd switched out of his Kid suit before arriving home. He was still thinking about that weird necklace that Kudou possessed. Something about it bothered him.

"Kaito! Kaito-bocchama! Welcome home!" was the answer from upstairs as Kaito headed down to his workshop. Standing near a space assigned to storage, he concentrated, then reached his hands out into the air in front of him. They disappeared into a dimensional pocket he kept handy and came out holding Hawk's rifle and handgun, which Kaito placed into the storage compartment for tinkering with later. Then he returned upstairs to the kitchen to dig through the refrigerator for a fast meal. A few minutes later, Konosuke Jii, the house's other occupant and owner of the Blue Parrot billiards parlor next door, finally appeared.

Kaito had been living with the older man for several years. Both of them had been orphaned at young ages and Jii also had potential as a magician, so it hadn't taken them long to grow close. Kaito had given up telling Jii to stop calling him "young master" years ago; the man was as persistent as he was loyal. He would often aid Kaito in either his preparation or execution of heists, but Kaito never let him don the monocle himself in case of a trigger-happy audience member.

Like Hawk had been.

"How did the heist go?" the man's easy exuberance never ceased to endear Kaito. The thief was thankful to have the excitable and often cheerful Jii in his dark and otherwise lonely life.

"The gem wasn't Pandora of course, but after that, there was a hiccup named Kudou Shinichi."

"What?!" Jii spread his hands across the other side of the counter, "You mean the vampire that joined your school this week? Is he really one of Them?"

"No. I don't know why he was there, but it wasn't because of that. But he had been fighting Hawk. That was how I finally managed to get the jump on that guy."

"Hawk is dead then?"

Kaito nodded.

"Then tonight was a success overall!"

"Yes," Kaito sighed, "except now I'll have even more trouble keeping Hakuba off me."

"He saw what happened?"

"He certainly saw me using magic. I don't know if he recognized Kudou."

"What?! You let a detective see you use magic?!"

"Calm down, Jii-chan," Kaito held up his hands defensively, "It ended up being for the best, anyway."

"What do you mean by that?" Jii asked inquisitively.

Kaito smiled at the picture of childish curiosity on his friend's face. "He asked me tonight about the Kaitou Kid's last heist before Kid disappeared almost a decade ago. So I told him what he wanted to know."


	4. Chapter 4

_Magic is real. Magic. Is. Real. I_ knew _I wasn’t hallucinating all those years ago! I was right!_

Hakuba Saguru had been repeating combinations of these thoughts like a mantra ever since the heist had ended.

His emotions were torn on how to respond. What he had confirmed changed everything about how he saw the world, which terrified him. If there was ever a case he couldn’t solve, should he suspect the involvement of arcane powers or non-human sentient creatures? Could animals secretly talk? Were unicorns and Pegasus and the Greek Pantheon real, too? The possibilities were endless with so many old legends about magic.

But almost equally as strong was the vindication of having been right all along, despite everyone he respected and didn’t disbelieving the account of what he’d seen. As he grew up, even he had begun to write off that night as a childish daydream, not that he ever normally had daydreams like that of course.

It also felt surreal, both in that _magic was real_ and that he’d spent so long questioning himself and was on the other side of that, thanks to tonight’s heist.

* * *

 

Upon breathlessly opening the door to the museum’s rooftop, Hakuba found himself greeted with the sight of the Kaitou Kid. The thief was focused on him instead of the audience like usual. He seemed to be waiting. Fortunately, the crowd below couldn’t see either of them from this angle.

“Going by the looks you were giving me earlier, I had a feeling you wanted to talk.”

Saguru took a moment to catch his breath as well as recover from the shock of Kid’s words. Kaitou Kid was going to stay and talk, just like that? Yes, the thief was right that Saguru had finally made up his mind to at least try to ask Kid something he’d been wondering for a long time, because there was no one else to ask. Still, he doubted this particular Kid would actually be able to help even if he was miraculously willing to give a straight answer. His question involved something that had happened before the original Kid had disappeared. The Kid standing before him now, whom he was sure was his classmate Kuroba Kaito, may not even know about that night.

“You’re going to just stop and let me talk to you in the middle of a heist?” Saguru couldn’t help being skeptical.

Kid responded with his characteristic grin that meant absolutely nothing. “I have a feeling it’s important.”

_Well then. I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth, at least this time_.

But if Kuroba was wholly unaware of what had happened and its implications, then he didn’t want to involve him. “Is the original Kaitou Kid still alive? There’s something I need to ask him.”

"What makes you think there's more than one Kid?"

"You're too young to be the one who disappeared eight years ago."

Kid shrugged noncommittally. "If you say so."

"So,” Saguru pressed, “Is he still alive?"

Kid paused for a moment. "I wonder…Is this about what happened on the first heist you ever went to?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Kid smirked.

_Does he_ know _?_

Saguru took a moment to recollect his thoughts. “How much do you know about that?”

“I know what happened that night. If that’s what this is about, you can ask me, Tantei-kun.”

Saguru froze at the nickname, one that had only been used by the previous Kaitou Kid on the night in question.

“Although,” Kid added, “I suppose it should be ‘Tantei- _san_ ’ now, shouldn’t it? You’ve become a very successful detective since then, at least when it comes to catching other criminals.”

Saguru ignored the jibe for once. He wasn’t sure what to do, now that he was here and finally had the chance to ask. He honestly wasn’t sure how to go about it. He had to word his questions carefully if he didn’t want vague or meaningless answers.

_Well actually, if he’s serious about this, then he should tell me what I want no matter how I ask it._

He took a breath. “That night, I saw more than a few things that I would have thought impossible, and I…” his tongue froze up.

_How do I say something like this in a way that doesn’t sound ridiculous?_

Kid let out a sigh, the first hint of possibly genuine emotion he’d shown all night. His grin was gone. “You want to know if it was real,” he stated quietly, “if the world is bigger and crazier than you’d ever dreamed.”

There was something intense about Kid’s eyes that made Saguru look away. “’Feared’ might be a better word, but…yes,” the last word was whispered almost pleadingly.

Kid hesitated for a few moments, something no one was used to seeing the thief do. “…Not every person you may run into in life will be human, even if they look it. There are others out there, dangerous creatures that use…magic.”

That last word chilled Saguru even more than the mention of the ‘creatures’.

“Magic is real, Hakuba, and you would do well to remember that.”

_He gave me a straight answer. So…it was all real._

Then suddenly they heard a barely audible, low, quick sound that reminded Saguru of a handgun. They turned to face the direction it had come from, an office building that stood adjacent to the museum. Saguru could barely make out a figure in the darkness, standing with his arm outstretched, towards the ground right in front of him.

Kid began to rifle frantically through his pockets. “Go back downstairs and don’t come out for a while. I saved your life once, so don’t make me have do it again.”

_That wasn’t you. That was your predecessor._ “What are you going to do?”

Kid’s playful grin returned. “I’m going to go crash the party.” By now, he was stationed at the edge of the roof. “Three, two, one…!”

_Boom!_

There was a bright flash of light coming from an explosion where Kid stood, and then the thief was sent flying off the museum’s roof like a bullet. Thanks to the moment of surprise, Saguru couldn’t get out the pair of binoculars he always brought to heists in time to see Kid land, but he breathed a quick sigh of relief when he saw Kid on the distant roof, having a wrestling match with another figure against the wall.

Then he noticed another figure, lying prone and unmoving, whose features he could not make out in the darkness.

He had to get over there. He wasn’t sure of what he would do once he got there, but he couldn’t just stand here and watch.

He bolted through the door leading downstairs to check on the inspector and the rest of the Kaitou Kid Taskforce. The cops were no closer to freeing themselves from a giant oozing blob of…something incredible sticky that Hakuba had narrowly avoided earlier, and there wasn’t enough time to stop and help.

He dashed outside, for once not bothering to check his watch and calculate how long he spent battling the current of Kid’s fan base outside and procuring the necessary keys to enter the office building. After sprinting up sixteen flights of stairs, he finally reached his goal.

He opened the roof access door just in time to see Kid and his combatant fall off the building, and the latter had a large pair of black wings sprouting from his back.

Saguru ran to the edge of the roof and saw Kid gliding away to the right. The other person was gone.

After staring blankly for about ten seconds, processing what he had just seen (a _person_ _with wings_ ), he turned with a sigh, only to witness what was left over from the fight.

What caught his attention first was a large section of black on the otherwise sand-colored pavement at the corner where the floor met the wall of the small structure framing the stairs he’d just come through. It was covered unevenly in a layer of ash and smelled like a cremation had taken place. Outside of it were dark, glossy flecks that on closer inspection were revealed to be blood. A little ways away from it, near the edge of the roof, was a much bigger pool of blood. Oddly, the blood there smelled like it had burned and was unusually congealed. A thin, uniform film of drying blood should be present on the surface, slightly thicker around the edges, but here, that film was unevenly thicker significantly closer to the center than it should have been.

Glad that he always kept crime scene supplies on hand, the detective donned disposable latex gloves and helped himself to samples from the large pool of blood and each of the smaller dots (to be thorough) as well as the ash. After taking several pictures, he debated whether to notify the police of what had happened up here, and reluctantly decided not to in the likely case that his samples in the lab would turn up results that would be unexplainable without considering… _magic_ and the like.

* * *

 

Somehow, Saguru had been able to return the keys to the building and come up with an excuse for Nakamouri-keibu for needing them that didn’t send the other officers inside to investigate. Something about looking at the whole place from another angle. He didn’t quite remember anymore. He’d been too shell-shocked since his conversation with Kid and the events following. Baaya, the nanny who had mostly raised him and was more a mother to him than his real one had ever been, was free to pick him up that night, so as he rode home, his mind was occupied replaying that night eight years ago, the night of Hakuba Saguru’s first heist.

* * *

 

“Now, bocchama, behave yourself tonight. I know you want to chase the thief with the grownups, but just because your father was irresponsible enough to let you come here doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Baaya.” An eight-year-old Saguru pouted, feigning disappointment while surreptitiously noting the location of the stairs in the building. The woman must have suspected he was going to try something, because he was ill-behaved little enough that she didn’t usually explicitly command him to stay nearby. At least she never spoke to him with a higher-pitched voice like most adults did to children. He’d always found that demeaning.

If all went as planned, he would certainly get the paddle tonight, but it would be well worth it.

_And her thinking I may run off certainly won’t stop me from doing it._

Baaya had always told him he was stubborn in unhealthy ways like his father. Saguru himself found it insulting to be compared to the lazy man with a politician’s smile.

He’d done his research thoroughly before this night. He knew how the Kaitou Kid Taskforce, the small subdivision responsible for dealing with the thief’s activities, didn’t seem to learn from their mistakes in their attempts to capture their quarry, and he didn’t expect that to change.

That was why he was going to catch the thief first, his way. And his way was one that no police officer could implement.

Over the years, Saguru had noticed and had become annoyed many times at the fact that adults didn’t take children seriously. So the Kaitou Kid probably wouldn’t, either, and that would cause his downfall at Saguru’s hands.

Unfortunately, because of his official status as No One Important, there was no way for him to enter the building and prepare a trap of some kind. He was only allowed to be there at all because his father had come and told Inspector Nakamouri Ginzo, the loud, excitable man in charge of the task force, that Saguru wanted to be a police officer one day (which was vaguely true), after which he left his son in Baaya’s care and the inspector begrudgingly warned them to stay clear of the exhibit and stay out of the way. Thus everything he used would have to be brought in on his person with little time for preparation. His methods were further limited by the kinds of materials he would be able to get his hands on.

His plan was this: lose Baaya, sneak up to the roof where Kid always goes eventually and wait, then pretend to be lost and have Kid take pity on him (it was worth his pride in this case), thus disarming him mentally. Then when Kid approached him, he would strike. His biggest advantage was something the task force no longer had a chance at: the element of surprise.

Just the thought of executing his plan made him smile predatorily, but he managed to hide it before Baaya took notice.

Losing her normally wasn’t easy, but the thief loved to create chaos, and Saguru had counted on this in his plan. As soon as the room went up in blue smoke, he took his chance and made a run for the stairs.

After sprinting up a few flights of steps, he stopped to listen for anyone following. Hearing none, he slowed his pace to a walk to catch his breath. He may need it for his confrontation with Kid soon, and he’d never been the athletic type. The kinds of sports and other physical activities available in school were boring to him, not to mention that they required cooperating with the other boys, who never ceased to tease him mercilessly for the shape of his eyes. Not that it hurt him anymore, it was simply annoying, and why put up with it when there were so many other interesting things to do, like read about Sherlock Holmes, a character with whom he could actually identify?

At first, the bullying had bothered him, when he was littler.  He knew he looked strange. His hair and skin tone were clearly European, and his face looked Asian except that it was a little broader. But it hadn’t taken him long to realize that the others kids were too stupid to keep up with what he had to say anyway (his vocabulary was impressive for his age, thanks to Baaya and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), and after that he began to appreciate his more obvious differences. He didn’t want to fit in or have anything in common with them now. No, he was fine with Watson, his faithful hawk, the only one he felt he could truly speak to about anything and everything, who always listened attentively even if she didn’t know what her owner was saying.

Thinking that maybe he would have a better time here in Japan, Saguru’s parents had just moved him, Baaya and Watson here to Ekoda, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan (a suburb of Tokyo, Japan) last week from his mother’s country home in Kirton, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. Upon their arrival and settling in, his father spent thirty-four minutes and twenty-two-point-four-nine seconds (according to the pocket watch given to him by his beloved grandfather, who came to England to visit him often) chatting awkwardly (“Did you know I met your mother while visiting my cousin at his White Horse Lodge in Kirton?” “Yes father.”), before finally retreating back to the depths of his home office.

As Saguru had expected, he hadn’t done any better getting along with people his age here. In fact, it was worse. The kids here made fun of everything the ones in Ipswich hadn’t: his hair and accent primarily. (Personally, Saguru had always taken pride in the fact that he could speak two languages, which was more than any of them could.)

Then a few days ago, Baaya made known to Saguru the existence of a strange thief who went around stealing priceless objects and inviting the police to come stop him if they could. He had jumped at the chance to capture a real criminal, which led him to the current situation.

Saguru had just arrived at the top of the last flight of stairs. Upon exiting to the roof, he couldn’t help but stare at what he saw.

The view of the city from thirty-two stories up was simply amazing.

He’d been high up like this before, but the landscapes at those times had been mostly nature scenes. Here, the nighttime city view reminded him of what the sky may look like if he possessed telescopic vision. Dots of light covered the area in every possible color.

But back to business.

He had brought a satchel with him, ignored until now as he removed it and dug through it, readying his equipment. He wished for not the first time that evening that he had found a way to smuggle Watson in with him.

“Well well, I didn’t know someone was meeting me up here.”

Saguru spun around to see a figure dressed in a white suit, complete with cape, top hat and monocle, watching him with a sparkle in his one visible eye.

The Kaitou Kid. Saguru hadn’t heard him arrive.

Recapturing his confidence, Saguru put on his best pity-me face and about-to-cry voice. “Do you know where my baaya is? I was with her earlier, but then I got lost…” He paused for a moment to let his words and innocent vibe sink in. “Please, oniisan, I don’t know where to go.”

“Don’t cry,” the thief took the bait and came to kneel in front of him, but not quite close enough for Saguru to make out his face properly. “What’s your name, boy?”

Saguru was worried the thief might connect the name with his father, but he didn’t have time to make one up now. “Hakuba Saguru.”

“Don’t worry, Saguru-chan, we’ll find your nanny in no time!” With that, the magician produced a pink rose and held it out to him. Saguru was both inwardly bristling at what he felt was a condescending honorific and a little wary of taking anything from the trickster, but didn’t let them show and he accepted the rose with his left hand, keeping the device on his right hidden.

“Wow, that was cool, oniisan!” And maybe Saguru meant it, just a little.

The man smiled again. “Well then, shall we go?” Kid held out a gloved hand.

Then Saguru realized that he had gotten a little caught up in the act. He’d already had a chance to strike when the thief held out the flower to him. It mildly annoyed him that the thief had so easily distracted him, but he was now presented with another opportunity to spring his trap. _No matter._

Saguru’s right hand rushed out to grab Kid’s. The hand buzzer connected and Kid, looking somewhere behind him, let out the smallest sound of surprise. Not bothering to hide his grin, Saguru immediately drew his small can of pepper spray from his jacket pocket.

He was just about to do the thief in when his upper back started hurting. A _lot_.

Everything after that happened too fast to keep track. His whole body felt too heavy. His fingers failed to keep a hold on the pepper spray and it fell to the ground with a _clatter_. He was about to slump over when he felt a pair of arms around him, and then he was moving for just a few seconds until he felt the person carrying him land on his feet and bundle Saguru closer to him while pressing on the spot on his back that hurt the most, near the right shoulder blade.  The pain was now a throb rather than a fire. At some point, the hand buzzer had been removed.

“Come out, you cowards,” Kid, the one carrying him, called out with a voice dripping with quiet malice. “I can see where you are.”

Saguru hated being oblivious to what was happening around him, so he made the effort to turn his head to look out curiously. He could see that they were now positioned on top of the room housing the stairs. There was no one on the rooftop below.

Then he heard a quiet buzzing sound, steadily growing louder until it hurt his ears a little. At the same time, a large, dark object faded into view. It carried a few lights on it, only providing dim light even after the object was entirely opaque, but it was enough. Saguru stared.

_How did a helicopter just…appear out of nowhere?!_

Three figures in black jumped from the helicopter, opening large wings to land gracefully. _What…_ are _they?_

“That’s more like it.” Kid said with some dark emotion.

The…creatures on either side held up small guns aimed at Saguru and Kid. The third, a woman with flowing white-blonde hair, simply stood with her arms crossed, smiling.

“This ends tonight, unless you wish to see another child die in front of your eyes.”

Kid’s hold tightened around Saguru, pushing the child into a position that forced him to face the thief’s jacket again. “Why did you shoot him?”

Saguru’s brain stuttered.

“It was an accident,” the woman answered, “He was between you and us, and young Calvados here was unfortunate enough to miss his mark. We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“What-“

“No more talking. Turn around and drop your card gun.”

Kid slowly obliged.

But Saguru never heard the card gun hit the floor. Instead, he heard the quick sound of it shooting, then Kid jumped and they were falling for a few seconds, until Saguru’s breath was taken away when their decent came to a halt. They were gliding through the sky.

That was when Saguru’s body gave up on staying conscious.

* * *

 

Saguru awoke on something comfortable. He was lying on his stomach and something was pressing on his back. He opened his eyes.

He was situated on a couch in a house that he’d never been to before. In view was a tiled kitchen and wooden stairs adjacent to the carpeted room he was in.

“Hey, look who’s awake!” Kid seemed back to his previously cheery demeanor.

_How did we get away? He used his glider, but there was a helicopter, and it would have followed us._

“Where- Oww!” Saguru’s question was interrupted when he tried to move. His back didn’t burn like before, but it was very sore.

“Sit still,” Kid chided in a whisper, “You were shot, remember?”

_Oh yeah._

He, Hakuba Saguru, eight years old, had been shot. With a gun.

Of course he knew that gun shots were excessively painful, but…wow. It had hurt a lot. _Strange, thougth…_

“Why doesn’t it hurt as much now?” Saguru asked, only partially aware that he copied Kid in his volume.

“Because I’m helping you get better. I’m a magician, remember?”

“No, I really want to know.”

Kid chuckled. “Don’t believe me, Saguru-chan?”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Don’t like it?”

“No, because my mother calls me that.”

Kid paused in whatever he was doing, though he still pressed Saguru’s wound. “You’re not like most kids, are you?” he said lightheartedly, “Then again, most kids love my magic shows and wouldn’t be trying to electrocute and pepper spray me.”

Saguru closed his eyes. “You’re a criminal. So you should be in jail. And when I’m bigger and grownups will actually listen to me, I’ll put you there myself.”

“Just because I’ve broken the law means I should be in jail? What about saving your life? I couldn’t do that from jail, could I?”

Saguru stopped.

_Why_ did _he save me? And now he’s here, tending to me. He could have left me and gone wherever he goes after a heist. Or if this is his house, then it would be dangerous for him to bring me here._

Seeming to read his mind, Kid spoke. “At your age, everything in the world looks black or white, right or wrong.” His voice was almost devoid of emotion save for a small tinge of sadness. “When you get older, you'll realize that most things aren't that simple. Most of the world is grey. Why did I save you, you ask?... Do I need a reason to save a life?

“You think I’m one of the bad guys just because I’ve broken the law. But sometimes a person has to go outside it to do the right thing. There are good people who break it sometimes, too. I’ll let you in on a little secret: the law is made based on what people agree is right, but it’s not a perfect system.”

Saguru absorbed the thief’s words silently, thinking of his dad and remembering the times he wondered how a man like that became a superintendent. “Because the people who make and enforce those laws aren’t perfect, either.”

“That’s right,” Kid replied quietly.

They sank into silence as Kid worked.

Then Saguru heard light footsteps coming from somewhere to his left.

It was a young girl, perhaps Saguru’s age. Her shoulder-length hair was brown and messy as it fell over the top of her pink pajamas. Her face was like that of an angry bull as she brandished a mop.

“What are YOU doing here, you thief?!”

“Good evening, ojou-san.”

“Aoko’s gonna catch you, and then my dad’s gonna throw you in prison, where bad guys belong!”

“Now, young lady, there’s no need to get violent.” Kid’s voice was a little strained.

The girl released a battle cry and charged.

“Farewell, Tantei-kun!” Kid called, as he opened a window and disappeared. The girl followed him up to the window, yelling after him, “And stay out!”

_‘Tantei-kun’? Well, that’s much better than ‘Saguru-chan’._

He of course wanted to be a detective, after reading Sherlock Holmes as much as he did. But he’d doubted he would be able to achieve the level of athletic ability required. But after tonight, he wanted it even more. He would be a detective who studied the minds of criminals to see what exactly made someone like the Kaitou Kid tick.

After staring out the window a little longer, the girl closed it, turned around, and noticed Saguru for the first time.

“Oh! Aoko didn’t see you there! My name’s Nakamouri Aoko! Nice to meet you! Were you kidnapped by that evil thief?”

* * *

 

It hadn’t taken long for young Aoko to realize that Saguru was injured and call her father. Saguru’s clothes had been dyed brown with his drying blood, but when Nakamouri-keibu arrived and took a look, he had said there were only some bad bruises, but no broken skin, and took him home to get a spanking from Baaya and his mother’s insistence over the phone that he returned to England (which he refused). Saguru hadn’t seen his wound or heard a gunshot that night, but he doubted the thief would lie to him about being shot.

So the question in his mind was: what happened to the wound?

Then his eight-year old self had remembered the other unearthly events that night and wondered if magic was real.

But it couldn’t be… right? But if it wasn’t, what the hell happened that night?

He spent years going back and forth on what he thought about that, on how much was adrenaline and childish imagination and how much was real. What happened from his perspective only made sense if it was real, but there was a part of him that wanted a second opinion from the only one who could give it.

But the Kaitou Kid was heard from again after that heist. Not for eight years. And then when he did reappear, Saguru took some time to get his courage up to ask, only to discover that it wasn’t the Kaitou Kid at all, at least not the same one. Then he thought of an alternative plan, and finally carried it out tonight.

But even with Kuroba’s words… after seeing those winged people twice now, it was beyond reasonable doubt.

He had been shot that night by invisible people in a silent, invisible helicopter, and the previous Kid had done…something with magic to heal him.

Upon arriving home, Baaya had graciously dropped him off at his grandfather’s famous laboratory next door, at which point he locked himself in and set to work on the samples he had snuck out of the heist. He started a DNA analysis scan for each blood sample, then a material analysis of the ash.

The results on the ash came back first. It hadn’t been plant material, but an animal or a human being. Or…whatever that prone, unmoving figure had been.

_So the body was somehow cremated while he was fighting the other one? Or there was something I missed._

The blood tests had taken long enough for him to at least try to grab a short nap (It was after midnight by that point, and Saguru was a morning person), but eventually his patience paid off.

As he suspected, the samples from the small flecks of blood were identical, and not human. In fact, the billion-yen machine in front of him didn’t know what it was, save a warm-blooded vertebrate mammal. The other blood sample came back almost-identical as well, ninety-nine-point-five-two-percent in fact, so Saguru would have assumed all the blood came from the same person had he not seen another figure lying where the large pool was. That degree of genetic variation was about the same as between two humans, but genetic analysis was never one-hundred-percent accurate.

Which meant that both of them were the same type of creature, except that only one had wings. _Maybe the other’s hadn’t grown in yet, or he’d lost them at some point…? Are they born with wings or do they grow in later…?_

It was surreal that he was even considering things of this nature.

_Worse yet, I have no assurance that none of this blood came from Kuroba._

Kid had been fighting, strange as that was, so some of the blood might be his. Or it might not.

_Again, I feel that I may be missing an important fact._

But what was he going to do with the information he did have? There wasn’t much he could do at this point short of approaching Kuroba directly. But even if he did, what would the point be? Talking about this with his classmate as Kid had been amazing enough, but as Kuroba, the chances of his being helpful were even less. And what would Saguru say? He’d confirmed that magic was real and there were non-human people that were trying to kill the thief, but their dynamic itself had not changed. And he definitely couldn’t tell anyone else about this.

After storing the samples in a section that only he had a key to, the weary teenager returned to his lonely mansion of a house and fell into bed, letting his mind wander elsewhere.

_I hope Kuroba is alright. It would seem he’s got more on his plate than even I thought. Maybe I should go easy on him tomorrow._

In fact, what was the point of publically accusing Kuroba of being Kid at all? It didn’t help anything but Saguru’s ego. Pathetic.

_Maybe I should try to help him instead._

The whispered thought came into being before he knew what was happening. At first he was alarmed by it, but as it lingered it began to make more sense.

Kuroba was going up against some awful people that probably used magic. If Kuroba was arrested, even if he did stay in prison, wouldn’t his enemies do something to get at him there, where he would have a harder time fighting back? Probably.

_I never did find out what happened to the first Kid. Kuroba dodged that question, just like the first Kid did when I asked how my wound stopped hurting as much. What if that Kid was killed by those winged people from that night?_

And these enemies clearly weren’t a problem that the police could handle. Did these people have their own form of hidden law enforcement? Regardless, Kuroba seemed an asset to facing them, so incarcerating him now just didn’t make sense anymore.

In summary, because magic was real, he couldn’t let himself (or anyone else) arrest Kuroba just yet. He didn’t know how or when to reveal these new intentions, so he would just lay low for a little while until he was finished reacting to everything and could think properly again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Be sure to comment if you found anything hard to read, or if there were spelling/grammar problems! Thanks!


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